I'm sure you already know plenty of examples of esters. Things that smell nice are a lot of times esters. Their carboxylic acid counterparts stink to high heaven though!!! A classic undergrad O chem experiment is taking something horrible like butyric acid and esterfying it to get something that smells nice.

I'm sure you already know plenty of examples of esters. Things that smell nice are a lot of times esters. Their carboxylic acid counterparts stink to high heaven though!!! A classic undergrad O chem experiment is taking something horrible like butyric acid and esterfying it to get something that smells nice.

Heh, we just did that lab in my ochem class. Unfortunately the product was an ugly solid that smelled 10 times as bad as the goat smelling caproic acid to begin with. Got to love when good labs go horribly wrong.